


carry on like carrion

by untitledproject



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Everybody Lives, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untitledproject/pseuds/untitledproject
Summary: Eddie forgets. Richie remembers.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66
Collections: CLOSE ENOUGH 2020-2021





	carry on like carrion

**Author's Note:**

> FOR TROPE 35: AMNESIA
> 
> With many thanks to famey88 and Hams for beta services.

"Wake up!"

Richie's entire body hurts, and his head is spinning.

"I did it, Richie!"

The cave is so dark, all that will resolve in front of are Eddie's wide, excited eyes, only a few inches from his face, reflecting some distant pulsing light.

"I killed It, me!"

He's pretty sure he has a concussion, too, because between the blood and the grime and everything else his body, newly returned to the physical plane, is remembering, he can feel the trace of sensation on his lips.

"I wish you could've seen, I always wanted to do track, I could've done _javelin –_ "

Richie does wish he had seen it, feeling a balloon of pride swelling inside him, but equally feels that Eddie needs to let go of his arms and stop shaking him before he vomits again.

"Eddie, I knew you could – " Richie reaches up, grabbing Eddie's shoulder to steady himself, and catches a blur of movement behind him. He doesn't hesitate, tightening his grip and pulling Eddie down on top of him, but he isn't fast enough. It's claw skewers Eddie, ripping right through his shoulder, crunching through bone and grazing Richie's ear. It pulls the claw back, taking Eddie with it, and Richie clings to him, getting flung along with him as It shakes them off into a smaller crevice and cushioning his fall. Dimly, Richie thinks if he didn't have a concussion before, he probably does now. Eddie is dead weight on top of him, and he rolls him over as gently as he can.

"Guys!" Richie shrieks, nasal and high pitched even to his own ear. "A little help here!"

He turns back to Eddie, who mercifully stirs, but an alarming amount of blood is already seeping into his shirt, and Richie thinks he can see a fragment of bone glinting in the dim light. Richie shucks his jacket off and presses it to down to try to stop the bleeding. Eddie hisses in pain, and Richie flinches, whispers an apology, but is quietly relieved he's still responsive.

"Eddie! Oh my god!" Richie looks up to see Beverly running over, sliding down through the opening, and she crouches down next to them. "What happened?"

"Three guesses, and the first two don't count," Richie says, dully. He lifts his jacket up a moment to show her, and immediately presses it back down when he sees a new pulse of blood oozing out. Eddie groans. Richie thinks he might pass out first.

"Mike!" Bev shouts, and her voice echoes through the chamber. "Get over here!"

It takes a moment, but then Mike's "A little busy!" comes ricocheting back. Richie mumbles something half-coherent to Eddie about not knowing how this echolocation bit was going to play out, maybe It would just get an idea about bats and turn into a vampire instead, and he feels more than hears Eddie's exhaled "Shut up, Richie."

"You're not too fucking busy for this, we need you!" Beverly yells again, and even though Richie thinks Mike is likely fighting for his life too, he agrees with her. He still startles when he hears Mike's footsteps heading toward them, and calls out a "Down here!" of his own.

"What happened? Eddie, are you okay?" Mike echoes when he makes it over to them. Instead of replying, Beverly shoots her hands up to Mike's waist, and starts unbuckling his belt. At the sound, Eddie snaps his eyes open and glances over at them, raising his eyebrows as he catches Richie's expression.

"Bev, when you said we needed Mike, I didn't think – "

"Beep fucking beep Richie, you're going to need to help too." She gets the belt off of Mike quickly, and starts laying it out flat next to Eddie. "Pick him up, if we get this tied around his arm it might slow down the bleeding a little." She turns back to Eddie. "This is going to hurt a lot, okay?"

Eddie nods, and Richie folds up a sleeve of his blood and grime-soaked jacket, offering it to him. "This is fucking gross, but maybe bite down on this?"

"It's your fault if I die from sepsis." Eddie glares at him, but nods again, cheeks puffing as he breathes out a few times before clenching his teeth into the leather.

Richie cautiously slides his hands under his left shoulder and his right side, trying not to jostle his arm.

"Hurry up!" Bev knees Richie in the side.

"Ow, Jesus!" Richie winces, but keeps his eyes fixed on Eddie. "Are you ready?"

Eddie's eyes are round with fear, but he grinds out a muffled “ _Fucking do it”_ through his teeth.

"Okay, on three. One, two - " Richie lifts Eddie on two, and nearly drops him when he screams into the jacket. Bev moves quickly, wrapping the belt under his arm and around his collarbone, cinching it tight. Eddie yelps, kicking his legs against Richie. "Fuck Bev, be careful!"

"It isn't going to work if it's loose," Mike says, half watching, glancing up into the wider chamber.

Eddie spits out the sleeve. "I'm fine, it's fine." There's a sound of rocks falling, and in the distance, Bill shouts something Richie can't make out. "Guys?" Eddie says, "can you kill the fucking clown?"

"Just hang tight man, we got this," Mike says, and slips out of the chamber. Bev touches her hand to Eddie's unstabbed cheek, looks meaningfully at Richie, and follows Mike.

"So are you just taking a time out?" Eddie asks in between shallow breaths, intermittently squeezing his eyes shut.

"Fuck off man, I have to keep pressure on this." He shifts his jacket over Eddie's shoulder, trying to find a part less coated in blood. The leather isn't doing anything to absorb the blood, which might be making it better or worse. "They don't need me."

"Richie, I – if I – "

"Don't, you're going to be fine."

"Shut up.” Eddie looks pale, though it’s hard to be sure in the dark. Richie can't imagine he looks any better, and he can’t blame the blood loss. "Even if I don't – "

" _Don't_."

" – I'm glad."

"What?"

"It makes sense now." Eddie's eyes are glassy, staying closed for longer and longer intervals.

"What makes sense? You're not making sense!" Richie knows he should stop interrupting, but can't, bewildered.

"I would've," Eddie's voice is faint, and Richie leans closer. "I would've never – " He trails off.

"Never what?" Richie waits, hoping Eddie just needs a moment. But he doesn't answer, only goes limp, and Richie panics, layering on top of an already substantial amount of panic, reaching reserves of adrenaline he didn't think he had. "Eddie. Eds. Eduardo." He shakes him a little, and slaps his cheek, lightly. "Come on man." Richie does the only other thing he can think to do, pressing fingers to the pulse point under his jaw. His fingers are almost numb, pressing hard enough to bruise, but he finds it, throbbing faintly against his fingers. Richie shivers.

Bill comes skidding around the corner, out of breath. "We've got to get out of here, I think the whole thing is collapsing."

"Did you kill It?" Richie asks.

"What the fuck do you think, _move_!" Bill scrambles off, shouting after the others.

"Shit, geez, okay." Richie scoops up Eddie, bracing him over his shoulders, knees cracking loudly when he stands. Eddie's belted arm dangles behind him, thumping into his back as he makes his way out of the lair. 

* * *

The drive to Derry Memorial Hospital takes three minutes, or three hours; Richie's sense of time and space narrowed to the faint throbbing of Eddie's pulse under his fingers. He can barely see anything in the back of Mike’s truck, illuminated the early morning light. His vision's constricted like it had been after that very bad night a couple of years ago, constricted like Eddie's throat during an asthma attack.

Either situation at least had a solution, both literal solutions, he thinks, hysterically. Richie means to be helping Ben keep pressure on Eddie's arm, but he can barely stay focused on his pulse, between the vibration of the truck and the hammering of his own heart. He tries to check if Eddie's still breathing, too, but glancing at his greying face makes his stomach lurch.

"Richie!" Ben whispers, as if Eddie's asleep instead of bleeding out all over the back seat.

"What!" Richie hisses back, because he isn’t going to correct him.

"Breathe!"

Richie does, choking on a few ragged breaths. His tunnel vision widens a little, but tears well in his eyes, exchanging one distortion for another. He doesn't dare move his hands to wipe them away. They drip down through the grime on his face and melt uncomfortably into his collar.

"You're going to pass out if you keep on like that. Do you really want them to need to admit two people?" Ben asks, voice gentle despite the reprimand. "We can get Eddie in there, but there's no way we can carry you too."

"Or at least we're going to hit your head on something," Mike calls back from the front seat.

"Why’d you guys even bother getting ripped then?" Richie whines, but he understands what they're doing, and faintly appreciates the effort.

Ben shifts, and places a hand streaked with Eddie's blood over the one Richie has pressed to Eddie's throat. "Hey." Ben waits until Richie looks up at him. "He's going to be okay."

Richie nods. He lets himself tangle the fingers of his free hand with the fingers of Eddie's good one. His hand is still warm, and Richie’s breathing finally slows. He catches Ben watching him, but Ben quickly looks away, actually being useful and helping keep Eddie's arm attached.

"We're here," Mike says abruptly, braking hard as the truck pulls up to the hospital under the 'Emergency' overhang, and they're in motion again.

* * *

A pair of doctors, an older, sallow woman and a younger bright-eyed man, find them in the waiting room a few hours later.

Bill and Bev had followed in Bill's car, catching up with Mike, Ben and Richie after a team of paramedics had descended on them, whisking Eddie through a pair of double doors. By unspoken agreement they had all lingered, collapsing into a cluster of chairs near the entrance. Richie can't remember any of them moving, but someone must have handed him a cup of coffee, since he's still holding it. He's been alternating between staring at it, trying to transubstantiate it into bourbon, and watching the staff behind the reception desk try to decide what to do with them and the smudges of greywater residue and sewer muck they're all leaving on the chairs.

Bill realizes first that the doctors are heading toward them and stands. Richie gingerly follows suit with the rest of them, fighting a medley of sore muscles and raw scrapes.

"Are you the group that brought in Mr. Kaspbrak? We need to update you about his condition," the senior doctor says. They all nod, asynchronous, and Richie bites the inside of his cheek until he can taste blood.

When no one says anything for a long moment, Richie glances down at Bill, waiting for him to start demanding answers, but he only waits, and Richie looks back to the doctors, who are sharing an uncomfortable look.

"We can't do the surgery here," the doctor finally adds, and puts her hand up, trying to forestall any of them from interrupting.

"Will he be all right?" Bev asks anyway, voice unsteady.

"Or all left?" Richie adds, choking on a laugh that's more of a sob. Bev glares at him, but she softens when she sees his expression.

"He's lost a lot of blood, but he's stable. We've already arranged to have him transferred to MassGen, and there will be a helicopter to take him shortly. Their orthopedics team is one of the best in the world; he'll be in good hands." She pauses. "Now are any of you next of kin?" She surveys them, a pack of drowned rats considerably worse for the wear, lingering a moment too long and too curiously on Richie. He tries to unclench his fingers from his jacket, stiff and tacky with Eddie's blood. "We'll need to send his PCP and insurance information, before we can finalize the admission."

"I can contact his wife, she'll have all his information," Mike says, a bit too eagerly. "She's in New York, she can meet him there." Of course Mike would know, he'd been keeping track and keeping _files_ on all of them, the creepy fuck. If he'd just given it up, moved on with his life, none of this would've –

Richie's eyes start to sting again, and he tries to get a grip. Ben is looking at him with a little too much concern, and he shakes his head a fraction, hoping he'll take the hint. He looks pained, but drops it, taking half a step back.

"Please do that, as quickly as you can. Have her call here first, and we'll direct her to the team in Boston," the doctor replies. The pair turn away and begin quickly walking down the hallway.

"Wait." Richie twists his hands in his jacket again, stopping himself from actually flagging them down. "Can we at least see him, before it goes?" he asks, and the rest of them mutter agreement.

The doctor starts to shake her head, but her colleague starts in before she can refuse. "Take the maintenance elevator up to the roof, and don't go out on the landing. Follow me, I'll show you where to go." The other doctor looks exasperated, but doesn't stop them, and walks off down another hallway.

They all fall into step with the doctor, Mike asking him politely interested questions about his time in Derry, where he'd gone to medical school, explaining that they'd actually all grown up here, and carefully sidestepping what had actually happened to bring them all back. The doctor is professional, and while he does slip in a question about the necessity of a police report, accepts Mike's assurance that it wasn't necessary without comment.

He leaves them on the roof, with a reminder to follow up with the contact information, in an enclosed outcropping with large windows looking out onto the roof. Behind them, electrical components are hidden behind a few sets of doors, labeled with an assortment of warnings about painful deaths. The helicopter is already out on the landing pad, but there are only a few paramedics standing around it, looking bored, so they line up in front of the window to watch. Mike breaks off, pulling out his phone for a call, and Richie resolves not to eavesdrop.

He eyes the emergency exit that leads outside; the only thing really separating them from the rooftop. He elbows Bill. "Do you think they don't want us out there because of that ER episode?"

Bill raises an eyebrow, but his gaze lingers on Ben and Bev, standing close together, conferring in low voices. "I think they don't want to have to hear the same fucking joke a thousand times," he says deliberately, but without stuttering.

Doors open in a mirrored version of their enclosure on the opposite side of the roof, and a second group of paramedics emerges, wheeling a gurney. They're too far away, and all Richie can make out are a bundle of sheets and straps in the flurry of motion, but Eddie has to be in there somewhere. He watches as they feed him into the helicopter, and he disappears quickly into its maw. Only when the doors are all closed, and the pilots fire up the propellers, does he raise his hand against the glass in a facsimile of a wave.

* * *

Once the helicopter vanishes, Richie flees the hospital. He mashes the down button on the elevator while the rest of them linger at the window, and squeezes into the doors as they open. Mike, still on the phone, notices him first and offers him a ride, but he shrugs it off, cringing at the prospect of facing the blood in the back seat again. Through the closing doors, he can hear Bill pointing out that they all needed to go back to the same place, and he slumps back against the wall.

Back on the ground floor, he punches in the Derry Town House as the destination into Lyft app, trying not to make eye contact with the rest of the patients and families clustered around the different waiting rooms. The app is still searching for an available driver after Richie makes it through the sliding glass doors and stands squinting in the midday sun. His broken glasses spike refracted light into his eye, flaring pain in his temple. He probably should’ve made use of the medical staff inside, but he’s already risking another one of the Losers catching up with him. He takes off on foot, but spots a faded checker cab in a tree-shaded side of the parking lot. Even better, the older local driver doesn't have any follow up questions about returning to the Town House. He even chuckles when Richie, unable to stop himself, in a poor imitation of the driver's accent, asks if that means he can get there from here.

Richie dozes in the back seat against the window, even as his forehead thonks painfully into the glass with every pothole and speedbump.

"Quite the storm we had last night," the driver remarks, breaking the too-short silence. Richie jerks upright, wrenching another muscle in his already protesting back.

"Was it?" he asks, dumbly.

"Ayup," the driver confirms, in that idiosyncratic Maineism. "Real strange. Haven't seen anything like it in - must be twenty-five, thirty years. Came on real suddenly, I half thought my house was going to fall down the way the rain was coming down and the ground was shaking." He levels an odd look at Richie in the rearview mirror. "You miss it?"

"Must've been asleep," he mumbles, though something starts to prickle at the back of his neck. _Had_ it been raining last night?

"Are you sure? You look like you were out in it," The driver adds, but Richie doesn't really hear it. They might've missed it, down in the sewers, but he can't picture what it'd been like before they went down. There's no question of remembering the weather of all things from the last time either, but that's less of a surprise. He leans back into the seat uneasily and tries to run through the events of the past few days. The restaurant, the statue, Eddie impaled on top of him, Bowers, the clown, and the bloody escape out of the collapsing sewers are all accessible, clearer in his memory than he would prefer. Last time, he thinks it had started fading the moment they climbed out, but trying to remember what it was like to forget is only adding to the ice pick behind his eye. Regardless, he was still in Derry, and Mike had stayed, and remembered. Richie was still in Derry, but Eddie was probably already across state lines.

He takes out his phone, and guiltily sends a few short messages to their new group chat.

 **richie:** sry for bailing  
 **richie:** i’m going to boston and i’m bringing eddie’s shit  
 **richie:** keep in touch, ok?

He stuffs his phone back in his pocket without waiting for an answer, but the vibrations from the incoming texts are reassuring enough.

* * *

In his own room at the Town House, Richie goes through the motions of clearing out without hesitation. He showers, decidedly not looking at the grime and blood circling into the drain, and throws away his greywater-caked clothes. The rest only takes a few minutes, chargers and toothbrush cramming easily into his duffel with his remaining change of clothes.

Standing in front of the door to Eddie's room, he thinks he might need to go back to his own again, really take his time about it, check every inch to make sure he hadn't forgotten any of the shit he doesn't really care about. He swallows hard, and pushes into the room.

It's a disaster, and the blood on the floor and walls have made the air putrid and metallic. Richie has a moment to hope whatever passed for a cleaning service in this dump had simply quit on the spot instead of coming in here, before dropping his bag and heading to the bathroom to retch. It's a mistake, it's worse in there, but he makes it to the sink anyway, and coughs bile into it.

Head pounding, he braces himself on the edge of the porcelain, and risks a glance at himself. His skin is pale and clammy, hair sticking down in odd clumps on his forehead from the shower and the new sheen of sweat. Richie quickly looks away and uses the mirror to take stock of the room instead. In between the blood, the torn shower curtain, and more blood, there are a couple dozen pill bottles scattered around. This seems like as good of a place to start as any, and he starts lobbing the bottles into Eddie's own open duffel. Most of them are unremarkable; a full alphabet collection of yellow-labeled supplement bottles he vaguely recognizes from a misguided early morning search for B12, a few over-the-counter pain and cold remedies, and bafflingly, Midol. He reins his thoughts away from the blood, making a game out of how many of the bottles he can land in the bag in a row.

A few of the bottles - orange with white prescription labels - grab his attention before he tosses them. A pang of guilt for wanting to respect Eddie's privacy is rapidly overrun by curiosity, and he scans the labels as he places them a bit more carefully in the bag with the rest. Percocet and Xanax are unsurprising enough, though Richie raises an eyebrow spotting the different names in the 'referring physician' box on the label. Amitryptiline and tramadol are generics he doesn’t recognize, and he wastes a few minutes googling before sitting back on his heels, letting out a low whistle at the compiled results – these definitely weren't just placebos anymore. "Fuck, Eds," he mumbles to himself, "You think you could've shared with the class?"

A final sweep of the bathroom floor turns up a plastic bag flung behind the toilet, with another handful of pills secure inside. These are small, house-shaped, and orange, and Richie shakes one out into his hand, peering over the frame of his glasses to make out the word stamped into it. Flexeril doesn't mean anything to him, but the lack of a prescription bottle does. He shakes his head, impressed, imagining Eddie in a dark New York back alley, suspicious in an oversized trench coat.

Pill already in hand, Richie swallows it, hesitates for a moment, and digs the Xanax back out of the bag and takes one as well. Pharmacopeia compiled, he works a little more quickly pulling the rest of his things out of drawers, wondering when Eddie even had had time to unpack. He itemizes an electric toothbrush, water flosser, back-up inhaler, night guard, and fifteen or so jars and bottles of creams and lotions he assumes are skin care-related, but most of the labels are in French or Korean. The overstuffed bag won't zip without a substantial amount of effort, and the triumph Richie feels at getting it closed is quashed by spotting the other side of the zipper starting to gape open; clearly broken. He hopes Eddie won't notice.

Richie gathers up the bag and sits heavily on the edge of the bed. Eddie's other two suitcases are still packed, standing up against the bed. He should just take them out to Eddie's rental car, but instead he pulls one of them toward him and starts unzipping it. Eddie's clothes are predictably neat inside, folded in a few tight rows and cinched under an elastic buckle. He has three suit jackets and two pairs of loafers tucked into the corners, and Richie isn't sure if Eddie thought they'd be able to get rid of It with a few aggressive rounds of contract negotiation or if he expected to come away from this and go right back to work, like this had been an inconvenient business trip. Both leave a bad taste in his mouth, but it might be the last of the Xanax dissolving on the back of his tongue.

Driven by a familiar impulse he still can't name, he tugs out one of the more casual pieces in Eddie's extensive portable wardrobe, only mostly ruining the organization of the clothes beneath. The light grey hoodie is surprisingly stretchy and soft. It's a little small when Richie pulls it on, and a little too warm for late May, but he zips it and the suitcase up, and heads down to the car.

* * *

Richie glides the rental down the 95, with only Eddie's euphemistically termed toiletry bag on the seat next to him and miles of vibrantly green trees for company. He fiddles with the radio, deciding if Eddie had reset the presets, and if so, how much material he needed to prepare about his newfound love of Christian rock, but loses interest when he drifts out of range and the stations are reconfigured.

As the miles pass, the ancestral homeland grows more familiar, even as the trees blocking his view of anything beyond the road triggers a restlessness he can't explain. He prods his tongue against his teeth, absently trying to determine if the multiple impacts with the cave walls had shaken anything loose. He'd done this drive a few times before, trapped in the back seat with his parents, similarly fidgety, probably making them both wish they hadn't forgone a condom while he managed to talk for three hours without taking a single breath. He can't remember who or what had been in Boston, but he had told Eddie about it, sneaking into his room when he'd returned and making wild promises about getting his license early and driving them both out of Derry. It had seemed far enough away at the time, even if he couldn't have always said from what. Now, as the afternoon sun dips lower in the sky, it feels like it might be too far.

Crossing into New Hampshire and scrambling for cash for the toll snaps him out of it a little, enough to remember to pull out his phone.

 **richie:** can someone take my rental car back to bangor?  
 **bill:** did you just remember you left your dick behind?  
 **bev:** are you okay?  
 **richie:** don’t you have to get ready for the ceremony?  
 **richie:** i think the church is only open a few more hours  
 **bill:** what  
 **mike:** I'll take care of it  
 **richie:** so you can elope with your bike  
 **mike:** But Rich who rents a convertible?  
 **richie:** how does audra feel about being in a throuple  
 **mike:** How much did they upcharge you on the insurance?  
 **ben:** Don't text and drive  
 **bev:** thanks mom

He starts to add that Eddie's mom was the only one he'd ever need, and tosses his phone into the cupholder instead.

Massachusetts welcomes him, and Richie starts actually registering the signposts for Boston. He starts to change lanes to make the turnoff onto the 93, even blinks the turn signal for a minute, but can't make himself move steering wheel. He gets more than a few horns and a finger for the lapse, and only turns the signal off when the exit is long behind him.

He should just keep driving to New York, rebook his flight, restart the tour. Mike is right, Eddie has a _wife_ who would be there, and take care of things. Eddie could get back in touch with them on his own terms, didn't need someone lurking around reminding him of everything they'd seen before he was ready. He hadn't asked for this.

Still, the original pretense of the arrangement carries enough weight that Richie pushes through. He can't just steal more of Eddie's things, and if Eddie had really crashed his car when Mike called him the first time, the last thing he needed was a missing rental car on his insurance.

On the other end of the city, he takes the second turnoff for the 93, and watches the traffic swell to something to rival the 405 in the opposite direction, locking him in. He sets his phone GPS to South Station, and hurtles down the narrow lanes, watching the city rise up around him.

* * *

Struggling with the collection of luggage, Richie keycards into his room, dumps the bags on and around the desk, and immediately leaves, unwilling to consider the implication of their things in a room together. Walking through the lobby and past the raised eyebrow of the concierge who'd just checked him in, his phone gives him the option of more than a dozen bars in the four blocks between his hotel and the hospital. He picks one that has the combination of "$" and apostrophes in its name which portends a high likelihood of neon shamrocks, and heads toward it, the breeze coming off the water making him zip up Eddie's hoodie again.

The bar is perfect - the decor meets expectations, there's only a handful of people clustered around a couple tables, and the bartender doesn't even speak to him when he sits down, only nodding once when he orders and again when he slides him his shot of Jameson and pint of Sam Adams across the table. When in Rome, anyway. The shot hits him a little harder than he expects, and it strikes Richie that he can't remember the last time he actually ate something. He gestures for a refill anyway, and pulls out his phone, ready to find some new things to regret.

His Twitter has always been a mistake, and a few days having had bigger problems than his social media presence hasn't changed that. He wastes some time scrolling through his timeline, getting absorbed in the (probably) not-supernatural horror of the primaries for another few rounds, before steeling himself for his own DMs and mentions. There isn't much out of the ordinary, mostly angry fans demanding refunds for the Reno dates he cancelled, with a few concerned comments sprinkled in for variety. Richie almost misses it, but buried in the mix is one reply, from an account he doesn't recognize, with a Youtube link and a few eyes emojis. Before it fully loads, he realizes it’s a video someone took at his last show. He forwards the link to the Losers' group message, adding "yikes" for commentary, and starts watching it, forgetting it's playing through the speakers. 

It's actually worse than he remembers. He expects the part where he chokes, but isn't fully prepared for the sense of doubling it gives him, remembering the onslaught of memory. It feels more visceral this time, fragments and sense impressions overlaying images of his friends and the Derry from his childhood with the ones he just left.

The video keeps playing rest of his act, and the growing feeling of self-disgust keeps him from dwelling on Derry for too long. It's not like he hadn't known it was derivative and lazy; the laziness had been the reason he'd let his manager hire a ghostwriter. It wasn't even the ghostwriter's fault, he'd just continued in the same vein Richie had been mining for a few years before, and it hadn't exactly hurt his career. And yet, Eddie had known he wasn't writing it. Richie frowns, numb to his own nasal voice still carrying tinnily through the rest of the bar. He'd been a little preoccupied at the time, but the implication of Eddie's jab finally hits home. Eddie had known about his act before Mike had called, had known enough about it and him to have feelings about its authorship. Had he remembered –

"Wow, do you actually like that asshole?"

"Huh?" Richie locks his phone, and crams it into his pocket, finally registering the set of overgrown frat bros now crowding him at the bar. "Not really."

"Fuck, you _are_ that asshole!" The doughier one of the pair socks the obviously more intoxicated one in the arm, but he keeps going. "Hey man, no harm, I used to like your stuff like, a few years ago, when you were good." His friend hits him again, and Richie starts draining his beer, hoping he'll get to the point.

"Hey, why don't you tell us a joke?" he asks, close enough now that Richie can smell the Jaeger on his breath.

Richie sighs. He gestures at the two of them, in their mid thirties and in polo shirts and boat shoes. "Isn't this a joke?"

"Fuck you man, what's that supposed to mean?" The guy grabs his jacket and Richie flinches back, hating himself. The guy's friend has him by the collar, but isn't really trying to pull him off.

Richie looks around and seizes on an escape - as fittingly half-baked as most of his routine. A woman who'd been sitting with her friend at a table near the other end of the bar has just gotten up, clutching her purse and a pack of cigarettes. He inclines his head toward her, and both members of the brain trust turn to look at her. "Hey, I'm gonna go, okay?" Richie tries. They look back at him, blank, and he rolls his eyes and makes a gesture with his hands. Their eyes widen, and the fist in his jacket turns into a slap on the back.

"Yeahhh, get it Trashmouth!" the first one calls, while Richie tosses a few bills on the bar and starts to leave. The friend offers a "Sorry dude, he's just like that," but Richie brushes past him. It’s a little gross, the ease of this feigned membership in a club he's still an imposter in, but he keeps up the charade and does follow the woman out of the bar. 

He assumes she'll be gone, but she's leaning against the brick, lighting up with one hand while rapidly texting with the other. She's a good deal shorter than him and more intimidating than either of the men inside, but he slouches over to her anyway, following the script.

"You mind if I get one of those?" Richie asks, trying to pitch his voice low enough not to startle her, but not so low as to creep her out.

She looks up quickly, but shrugs and pulls out another cigarette. She lights it for him too, and their eyes meet for a moment while the paper starts to burn. Hers are the wrong shape and the wrong shade of brown, but the angle pulses a current of déjà vu through him anyway. He takes an unsteady step back. "Thanks," he mumbles.

"Sure." She breathes a cloud of smoke into the air above her, and Richie watches it, feeling untethered.

She watches him for a minute, probably waiting to see if he'll leave her alone, but curiosity gets the better of her. "What did those guys want with you?"

Richie tries to lie and comes up short. "They're fans," he sneers, mostly at himself.

"Fans? What, are you famous or something?"

"Or something."

"For what?"

"Being an asshole." He grins at her, but she just stares back at him, expectant. "I do stand-up," he relents, rarely less proud of it.

She looks him over with a bit more intent, and having seen this decision-making process play out several times before, Richie recognizes when she comes to a conclusion she’s already regretting before she’s made it. "Do you want to get out of here?"

He considers it. It'd be easy to slide into the old pattern of disappointing hookups just to avoid having this conversation. But Eddie had called him out, had wanted authenticity, maybe still had some interest in the genuine article. Why had he come down here, why had he come back to Derry at all, if only to pick his life back up as if nothing had happened?

The silence has gone on too long, and her gaze has turned from begrudging interest to mild irritation. "I'm gay," Richie finally manages, tripping a little over the words.

"You might've had more luck at that place down the street, you know." It's anticlimactic, as responses go, but Richie doesn't think he _really_ expected the full bolt of lightning from the heavens bit. She takes another drag, then furrows her brow. "Why'd you follow me out here then?"

Richie balks, and takes a drag himself, stalling. The nicotine is cutting through the whiskey, making him more and less lightheaded at the same time. It had initially been about getting away from his "fan", now not a little bit about the cigarettes, and apparently, about this long-withheld confession. Admitting any of this seems unwise, even if she seems even less interested in his answer to the question than in himself. He looks at her more carefully – eyeing her thick frizzy hair, lipstick staining the tip of her cigarette, her residual incredulity at being rejected – and finally catches something. 

"I saw your badge," he says, pointing toward her waist with the hand holding his cigarette, scattering a bit of ash over himself from lack of practice. He wouldn’t have recognized it before, but the morning’s rapid induction into medical accoutrements had left an impression. "That's from the hospital, right?"

She looks down where he's pointing, and tugs it away from herself on a retractable cable before letting it snap back. "Ugh, I never remember to take this off," she says in a way which has Richie certain she leaves it there on purpose. "Yeah, I work there," she adds with a smile, pleased with herself for mirroring his evasiveness.

Richie's willing to play along. "What do you do?"

"I'm an ortho trauma attending. Orthopedics. Bone surgeon." She adds each phrase as Richie looks inadequately impressed. "You wouldn't believe it, we had someone helicoptered in from Maine today. We almost never get anyone from out of state. Have you ever even heard of Derry? I heard it was pretty gnarly."

Richie drops his cigarette and stubs it out with his foot like it was intentional. "Is he going to be okay?"

She gives him an odd look. "His team should have it under control, our department is one of the best in the world. I can't tell you too much more though, HIPAA, etc., you know." She hesitates another moment. "Someone you know?"

He crouches down and guiltily picks up the butt, now covered in a city's worth of germs. "Um. Kinda."

"Do you know what happened?" she asks, real interest creeping into her voice. "We've all been taking bets, and the pool’s nearly – " trailing off at Richie's expression.

He sticks to the story they'd decided on. "Some old house collapsed, and some rebar, um, got him."

She rolls her eyes. "Fucking Jared. He always wins these." Richie stares at her, and she looks contrite. "Sorry. I'm sure your – friend? – will be fine. He'll probably need a few rounds of x-rays and MRIs, but you should be able to visit tomorrow."

"Thanks." He means it, but he knows his smile is weak at best.

They stand in silence for a moment, until she pulls out her phone again and starts texting. "I'm going to go back in – my friend thinks I got mugged. Good luck, okay?" She doesn't wait for a reply, turning and disappears through the doors.

Richie doesn't move for a while, staring up into the streetlights toying with the cigarette butt until his vision starts to blur. Eventually he shuffles off back to the hotel, where Eddie's bags are still there, waiting for him.

* * *

Richie wakes up with a sore throat and congested, the early afternoon sun in a clear sky making the room disorientingly bright. The headache doesn't hit him until he moves, and with it comes a single word, Beantown, bouncing uselessly around his head until he staggers into the bathroom. He cups his hands under the sink for water, which does little for the headache, and feels even worse when he spots the plastic-covered glasses lined up next to the soaps. With another look at himself in the mirror, he accepts that using a glass was too good for him; resorting to his hands only completed the look.

He splashes some water on his face, decides Eddie can part with a Percocet and another Xanax, and immediately regrets it as he has to repeat the struggle with the zipper. It takes nearly five full minutes and a litany of swearing at it as he tries not to break it more than before. At long last, he hauls it out of the room, leaving the other suitcases behind, not sure how the hospital staff might react to him looking like he was trying to move in.

Richie tries to head straight for the hospital, but only makes it a block before nausea forces him into a Dunkin Donuts. He can't figure out how he mangles the order, but the coffee and donut he emerges with are both tooth-achingly sweet and make his stomach roil. He throws the half-eaten donut away and forces himself to drink the coffee, trying to buy some time before the pills kick in. 

The receptionist is welcoming, and kind enough to give Richie detailed directions, but after twenty of making his way to the right department he feels disoriented and out of place. The bag starts to cut off circulation in his arm, and he tries to shift it in the elevator but can't manage it without letting go of the coffee. He resigns himself to rapidly-numbing fingers while he closes the final distance.

In front of the room, Richie checks the smudgy room number he'd written down in hotel-branded ballpoint on his numb and now sweaty hand, and pushes open the door. Eddie's in the bed, and while he doesn't really look better, he doesn't look _worse_ , as long as Richie ignores looking too carefully at his shoulder. He shuffles himself and the bag into the room, thoughtlessly closing the previously open door behind him. When he turns back around, he freezes. Eddie is there, but so is a woman who can only be Myra. She's peering at the vitals monitor, and toying with the IV line running into Eddie’s left hand. The sense of doubling overtakes Richie again, seeing Mrs. Kaspbrak stopping him and the rest of the Losers from talking to Eddie after he'd broken his arm. Alone this time. Richie tries to back out of the room but backs into the door he’s just closed. 

"I pressed the call button ages ago," Myra starts, without looking up, "he needs the dosage adjusted, I was about to go down to find – "

With no response, she turns to look at Richie, whose smile is mostly a grimace. "Who are you?"

He feels too large for the space, Eddie’s bag already grazing the edge of the hospital bed, and too tall for the memory to fully overlay. He lifts his now entirely-insensate hand in an attempt at a wave. "Um, I'm Richie. From Derry?"

Myra wrinkles her nose in a way definitively unlike Mrs. Kaspbrak, but she surveys Richie and finds him wanting in a way that feels deeply familiar. Her eyes linger on his chest for long enough that he follows her gaze down, wondering if he's spilled coffee on himself, but realizes he's still wearing Eddie's hoodie; hadn't taken it off since the Town House.

She comes back to herself with a small shake of her head. "I don't think you have the right room - you shouldn't be in here. He needs rest, you'll disturb him - "

The bed creaks loudly. Richie and Myra both snap toward it to watch Eddie blink awake, and start using his good arm to prop himself up. Myra puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him, murmuring something to him that Richie can't make out. He stops struggling, and relaxes, peering out at both of them through rounded eyes that look more confused than alarmed.

"See!" Myra turns back to Richie, eyebrows nearly touching. "He shouldn't be awake yet, I'm going to call a nurse – "

"I just wanted to – "

"I'm going to call _security_ – "

"Who are you?" Eddie's voice is hoarse and soft, but it silences Myra.

"Um, hey Eds – " Richie can’t read Eddie's expression, and he trails off under his scrutiny.

"Are you my husband?" Eddie concludes, with only mild curiosity.

" _Eddie!_ " Myra yelps, and Richie's fingers flex dangerously into the styrofoam of the coffee cup.

Eddie seems to finally register Myra for the first time, and his eyes grow wider, color draining from his face. "...Mommy?" he asks, even more quietly than before.

Myra flinches. "It's Myra, your _wife_."

Some, but not all, of the tension in his visible shoulder eases. "Right, that's right." Eddie swallows harshly, and asks, "Could you get me – "

"Your inhaler?" both Richie and Myra say at once, glaring at each other when they realize.

"Some water," Eddie finishes, and flicks his eyes between them. Myra scrambles to bring a cup with a bendy straw to him, guiding the straw to his lips even as Eddie tries to take the cup from her.

Myra turns to Richie. "Can you please go? You're upsetting him, and he's obviously confused."

Richie looks back at Eddie, tempted to take the out he's been given. When their eyes meet, he buckles. "I'll go, if you want me to. But can we just talk outside for a second?"

Myra takes the cup back from Eddie, placing it back on the table next to him, just out of his reach. "Fine."

She follows him out of the room, and Richie closes the door behind him again. He keeps his hand resting on the doorknob, subconsciously imagining it locking.

"Look, I'm sorry," Richie starts, unsure of how he'll finish, but Myra cuts him off.

"You were with him, weren't you," she says, and it's not a question.

Richie nods.

"So this is your fault? You're the one who told him to come back?"

Richie nods again, then shakes it quickly, and feels dizzy. "I didn't – I had to go back too. I live in California now," he finishes, stupidly.

"And I'm guessing you won't tell me why you had to go back either, or what actually happened in that _shithole_ you call a hometown?" Myra bears down on him, and Richie shrinks back against the door, shoulders near his ears, the few inches he has on her disappearing quickly.

"It's not personal! You just wouldn't believe me, I promise." Behind the anger, Richie can see she looks more tired, and maybe afraid, than anything. He shrugs the bag off his shoulder, nearly dropping it as he holds it out in his numb hand. "I didn't want to start anything, I just wanted to bring his things down."

She looks it over, and starts to take it, but Richie meets her gaze at a blood stain on the side he hadn't noticed before in his earlier struggles with the zipper, and she drops her hand. "I have his other stuff too, it's just at my hotel, I can go back and get it now if you want?" he adds.

Myra sighs, fight going out of her. "If you knew him before," she breathes, "did you know his mother, then?" She forces out the question in a rush, keeping her eyes fixed on the bloodstain.

Richie raises his eyebrows, genuinely surprised. His arm finally gives out, and he drops the bag, breaking Myra's focus, and when she finally looks back at him her expression is softer than he expects.

"Kinda, yeah."

"Was she – what was she like?" Myra asks, the other question implied but not intoned. "It's the second time he's called me that," she says, more to herself. 

"She didn't like me either," Richie says, trying for a laugh, but Myra doesn't even smile. He exhales for a long time, trying to push past a dozen other jokes to something she deserved from him, being at least part of the reason she and her husband were here in this miserable junior city. "She really loved him."

Myra nods tightly. "I need to get some air. Stay if you want. I’m not sure I can do this anymore."

Richie watches her retreat down the hallway, hand still on the doorknob, asking “Wait, what?” only when she’s too far away to hear. When the click of her sensible heels fades all the way away, he rolls his shoulders back, trying to straighten, and pushes through the door again, nudging the bag back in with his foot.

"Good one Eds," Richie says brightly, swinging for the fences. "You even had me going for a second."

Eddie looks blankly at him. "What?"

Richie freezes. "Just now, you were saying – "

Eddie starts to look puzzled. "Where did Myra go? Maybe she was right, I'm not sure – "

Richie's vision starts to swim alarmingly, hope and resolutions dissolving as his suspicions about borders and residual magic are confirmed. "She just went," he braces himself on the back of the chair Myra had been sitting in, "to the bathroom, I think. I can go get her if you want?"

Eddie waves him off. Richie hesitates, still not sure if there's a punchline he's missing.

"You're that comedian, aren't you?" Eddie tilts his head slightly, the motion crinkling the clear bandage over his cheek. It covers a neat row of black stitches, and Richie imagines what they would feel like under his fingers.

"Yeah, I guess." It feels like he's standing on a dock, the linoleum tile swaying beneath his feet. "Richie Tozier. We uh, met. In Derry, though."

Eddie's eyes widen, in what Richie hopes is something like recognition. "Right, Derry," Eddie says slowly. Richie finally puts down his coffee, barely capable of retaining liquid at this point, reaches precariously over the chair to hand Eddie his hospital issue water again. Eddie's fingers brush his as he takes it, Richie careful to make sure the cup is steady in his grip before letting go.

"You're Richie? From school?" Eddie studies him, for much longer and much more openly than he had at Jade of the Orient. Still, Richie waits for the force of mutual recognition, of _seeing_ through the last thirty years, to pass between them again, but it doesn't come, and it's only Richie who's watching the grown man with the fucked up shoulder and the boy with his arm in a cast, superimposed despite the time and space. "What's wrong with you?" Eddie asks, a bit sharply, and Richie realizes he's forgetting to breathe again, how ironic after all this time.

"Nothing, I'm fine." Richie takes the chair and swivels it around, straddling it backward and resting his arms and chin on the back of it. "Trashmouth Tozier, all grown up. Guess I'm not what you dreamed of, huh."

"You got tall," Eddie says dryly. "Why're you here?"

"Brought your shit, er, some of it." Richie gestures over to where he left the bag, slumped on the floor. "You're welcome."

"Why the fuck do you have my shit?" There's no hostility in Eddie's voice, only bewilderment. "It's been what, thirty years?"

Richie’s fingers twitch, itching to grab his phone and text the others, have Bill or Bev tell him what to do, but it'll have to wait, he'll have to keep winging it. "Eddie, do you know why you're in the hospital?"

Eddie looks down at his arm and shoulder. Richie follows his gaze, finally seeing his arm is immobilized in a combination of gauze, dressing and metal splints, and he looks away quickly. "I was in a car crash?” he asks. “But – "

"Uh, yeah, I think so," Richie interrupts, "but there was more. We all, the Losers, remember, we all went back to Derry, Eds. For a reunion? And you got hurt. Bad. So they had to bring you here."

"Are you fucking with me? Where's the rest of them, then?" 

"Still up there. I think." They'd better still be there, someone needed to be, under the protective spell, under whatever the fuck was still happening here. He can't figure this out alone. "I needed – I volunteered to come down first, talk to Myra."

"Yeah right." Eddie narrows his eyes in suspicion, and then closes them for too long to pass as a blink. He jerks back awake. "What the fuck happened? At a _reunion_?" he demands, but starts fading quickly again.

"Hey, you should probably get some rest, this is kind of a lot. Let me get your sippy cup, I can tell you what happened later," Richie says, not a little relieved.

"Oh, eat a dick," Eddie says, but hands the water to him, and settles back, easing further into the pillow. Richie eyes the blanket, riding low on his chest, but doesn't touch it.

"I can stay until Myra gets back, if you want," Richie offers, even though he doesn't know what he'll do when she does.

"Thanks," Eddie whispers, eyes closed.

A few minutes pass, and Richie watches Eddie breathe steadily, pinballing between _thank fuck he's alive'_ and inchoate rage at the unfairness. He has his phone half out of his pocket to text the rest of the Losers, when Eddie starts talking again.

"Hey Rich?" His voice is even more far away than before.

"Yeah Eds?" Richie asks, heart in his throat.

"Am I dead?" Eddie doesn't sound overly concerned by the idea, but Richie can be worried enough for both of them.

"No!" Richie's a little too loud, and looks around, expecting to be told off. "You're fine, you just need sleep." And a new arm, or something, but that was a lot less urgent.

"It's okay, I've been dead before," Eddie says hazily, throwing Richie back into the sewers, fragments of images from the Deadlights at the edge of his vision. "But it's different, you're here this time. You didn't let – " Eddie trails off, falling asleep with his mouth open, familiar from dozens of sleepovers.

"I'm here," Richie whispers. He finally does pull out his phone, sends a screenful of red alert emojis to the Losers, and when they don’t answer immediately, switches to crashing a bird into pipes, listening to the steady beeping of the heartrate monitor.

* * *

"Are you sure?"

"I told you, he barely knew who I was." Back in the hotel room, Richie paces, gripping his phone and making semicircles around the bed. "He _didn't_ know who I was, until I told him. And he doesn't remember anything about us coming back to Derry."

"Then what did he say?"

"He told me I could fuck Myra, since his mom's dead and all." Bev silently waits for him to continue. "I don't know, not much, he was only awake for a couple of minutes," Richie says, trying not to think about anything Eddie had said when he'd first woken up, or started falling asleep.

"Is he doing okay?"

"I mean, he's alive, so, can't complain right?"

"Rich."

"Who cares if we're just some jerkoffs he knew from school, and he doesn't remember that we killed a fucking _alien_ , it's fine!"

" _Richie._ "

"Fine, he's fine, okay, I don't know. I think they're planning something to work on his shoulder, a nurse came by and told me to get lost because he needed to have some scans done. He's going to be here a while." Richie runs his free hand through his hair, tugging at it, trying to use the pain to lower his blood pressure.

"We'll come, soon. I promise. But – "

"But I could tell, he really didn't remember. We're going to start forgetting again, aren't we?"

"I don't think so, Mike thinks it's different this time." Bev sounds distracted, which might be fair, they've been going around in circles about this for half an hour already.

"Well can you get Mike?"

"No, I don't know where he is. Or, maybe he's sorting something out at the library. Call him yourself."

"How does Mike know anyway? He wasn't even right about that ritual, he still hasn't left Derry, none of you have – you'll probably forget about this phone call the second you cross county lines, like he did – "

"But Richie, _you_ remember." Bev is placating, but her patience is rapidly evaporating.

"Maybe I'm different!" Richie nearly shouts, a little too close to the truth. "Maybe because I – got here quickly, knew what I was trying to do. Are there rules for this It handed out that I missed somehow? Did you get little pamphlets on "Dealing with Magical Memory Loss" while I was getting pelted with my own obituary?"

"Okay, I need you to calm down – "

"Calm down? Calm _down?_ I'm so calm Bev, I'm a lake on a cool summer morning. Undisturbed. Placid. I'm – "

"Because I need to tell you something, and I need you to hear me."

Bev's voice is sharp, cutting through his tirade, and Richie stops. "Sorry."

"It's okay." Bev pauses for long enough that Richie pulls the phone away from his ear, checking the connection. "Stan's alive."

Richie can hear static, but it isn't coming from the phone. "He's – what? But, at the restaurant – "

"I know, I – "

"Bev, _you_ said Patty told you he was dead. I mean, great, I'm glad he's not, but – "

"I _know_ , but she just called, and said we'd never talked before. Stan just woke up in the hospital, and told her about us, and that he wants to see us, and that's when she called."

"But how – I don't – "

"I don't get it either, but do we have to? Is it really that hard to guess?"

If the phone call hadn't been real. If Stan wasn't dead, could have been there. Richie thinks his brain's shifted three gears without hitting the clutch. "Yeah, you're right. So he's okay?"

"I think so. Patty said he lost a lot of blood, and they're going to keep him under observation a few more days now he's awake. We're going to fly down tomorrow. You should come." 

"What about Eddie? I can't just leave him here – "

"You said he'd be fine, and we'll come back later. But Stan _asked_ to see us. Besides, maybe Eddie just wants some time alone with his wife."

"But what if he forgets about – us? Completely?"

"Would that really be so bad?"

Richie opens and closes his mouth several times, but nothing comes out.

"Just think about it. Stan will want to see you too. And get some sleep, you sound terrible." Richie starts to argue again, but Bev hangs up on him.

Richie's still staring out through the gauzy inner curtain of the hotel window, when Ben texts him their flight information an hour later.

* * *

Eddie's awake, which feels promising, but Richie holds his breath when he knocks on the open door and walks into his room the next day. Myra’s nowhere to be seen, but Eddie’s inhaler is out on the bedside table, so she must’ve come back to dig through the bag earlier. He hasn't brought the rest of Eddie's things, having forgotten them when he left the hotel.

"You're back," Eddie says, not doing more than glancing up from his phone.

"Good morning to you too, sunshine," Richie singsongs, a little relieved despite himself. Then again, the forgetting hadn't been so clear-cut last time, either, or he would've noticed, or tried harder. He slides into the chair, kicking his feet up on the metal guardrail at the side of the bed.

"That's disgusting, do you know where your shoes have been?" Eddie continues tapping at his phone with painstakingly awkward movements of his non-dominant hand.

Richie starts to take them off, but Eddie cuts him off with a glare. "Are you trying to get MRSA?" he asks, and Richie lets his feet fall back to the ground. Eddie's steadfastly ignoring him, frown lines of concentration between his eyebrows, even as his gaze looks a little unfocused. Richie drums his fingers on his knees for a minute, and is half out of the chair to leave again when he asks, "So how are you feeling Eds?" before he realizes he's decided to start talking.

"Busy," Eddie says dismissively.

"Busy checking in with your friends?" Richie tries to remember what Eddie had told him about his life in New York, but can only think of the group chat with the rest of the Losers, with Eddie conspicuously absent, still periodically pinging as they make plans to go down to Atlanta.

"I don't have – " Eddie answers absently, before looking at Richie accusatorially, as if he’s tricked him. "Some of us work for a living. In the daytime."

"Yeah, yeah, your alphas and betas, confidence intervals, constant attention to the S&P," Richie rattles off. "Can't manage risks a few days without you?"

Eddie immediately looks suspicious. "What would you know about it?"

"You told me, rem – " Richie starts, faltering when he hears the word he’s about to say. "Sorry."

Eddie shrugs, one-shouldered. "So are you going to tell me what happened, or are you just going to sit there and try to osmose a career?"

He probably should've planned an answer to this obvious question, but Richie comes up short. "So, we made a promise when we were kids." Eddie looks dubious, and Richie thinks he owes Mike a couple of apologies. What was he even doing, reintroducing Eddie to all of the nightmare bullshit, when it was all over? He abruptly changes tack. "To come back to Derry, when we were older. Like I said, a reunion, just even lamer than high school. We were drinking, measuring dicks, and we went to check out an old house where we used to – play. It was pretty run down, the floor collapsed, and some rebar fucked up your shoulder. Guess you must've hit your head pretty bad too, since." Eddie's already drifted back to his phone, losing interest in the obvious lie.

Richie can't blame him, but he can't quite leave it there either. Seized by an impulse, he swipes Eddie's phone out of his loose grip, ignoring his "What the fuck!" of protest. He scrolls through the email Eddie's been writing, batting away his attempts to grab it back, trying not to get tangled in the IV tubing still running into Eddie's hand. Most of it probably wouldn't make sense in any circumstance, but there are a lot of words misspelled, and it doesn't look like he's managed to end a sentence. 

Richie glances back at Eddie, who looks like he's trying to kill him with his mind. "Hey man, are you sure you want to send this?"

"Fuck off, just give it back." Eddie's failed attempt to cross his arms over his chest is pretty pathetic, and Richie almost relents.

"No really, just dictate what you want, this is really sad," he tries instead. "I can send it for you, if it's important."

"I don't need your help." In a surprisingly quick move, Eddie snatches the phone back, though not without momentarily grabbing Richie's hand as well. Their eyes meet, and Eddie searches him for something, but whether he finds it or not, he drops his eyes back to his phone, mumbling something about how he better not have slipped in anything about his mom, and Richie only just stops himself from telling him what he slipped his mom last night.

Sobering, Richie asks, “Sure you shouldn't at least take a few days off?” Maybe Eddie didn't need to remember what had actually gone down with the clown, but he hadn't seemed this concerned with their unplanned vacation before.

“I already missed some meetings with an investor, and their portfolio's underperforming," Eddie answers. "Myra thinks they might fire me," he adds, reluctantly. He grabs the inhaler off the table next to him, triggering it down his throat before Richie even hears his breath hitch.

“Bullshit, it hasn't even been a week,” Richie says, with a considerable credibility gap.

Eddie sighs, turning over the inhaler in his hand a few times. “I don't know. I’ll be out for a while longer anyway, they scheduled the surgery for tomorrow.” He twists his neck to look down at his shoulder, which slides him a few degrees down the pillows.

Richie latches on to the new topic before he can give any more questionable career advice. “Fuck yeah, so they’re going to make you a cyborg? Get you a metal arm? Mad Max: Fury Eds?"

Eddie scowls. "That's not funny."

Richie grins, leaning into much more familiar territory. "It's not a joke, you'd make a great Furiosa." 

"Shut up, I didn't see it."

"What, don’t you ever see movies?"

"No, Myra doesn't like that kind of thing," Eddie mumbles, looking away, fiddling with the hem of the blanket. 

"You used to love – "

"Who cares?" Eddie cuts him off. "We were kids, I grew up," his pointed glare implying _unlike some people_ well enough.

For once, Richie drops it. "Yeah, okay. So what are they going to do then?"

Gingerly, Eddie wiggles the fingers on his other hand, surprising Richie, who'd been trying to not think too carefully about what had actually gone wrong. "They said everything important is still more or less connected. But they're going to replace the whole joint, I guess, the bone underneath is shattered. It'll take a long time. I don’t know if – ” He triggers the inhaler again, breathing deeply. “It'll be something to manage," he finishes.

"I mean – you'll get through it, right?" Richie hopes he looks encouraging. "And you have Myra to take care of you?" he adds, unable to resist the urge to poke at his own bruises.

"Yeah, she'll take care of me all right." Eddie says sourly, then frowns. “I think. She isn’t too thrilled about all this.”

Unwilling to weigh in, Richie leans back, looking out at the clouds in the narrow window near the top of the room.

Eddie picks his phone back up, and pokes at it for a while before quietly asking "Don't you have something you need to get back to? How long are you in town anyway?"

A flock of Canada geese fly past, honking loudly, before Richie answers. "I think I'm going to leave tomorrow."

"Oh," Eddie says quickly, slipping further down the pillows.

"It's not - I need to see Stan, is all," Richie explains, inexplicably defensive. 

"Stan?"

"Yeah, remember, he – liked birds." 

"What's wrong with him? Wasn't he there?"

"Um." Again, Richie questions his lack of foresight.

"What actually happened, Richie?"

"I don't know if I should tell you," he answers, more directly than he'd intended. Expecting Eddie to tell him he can handle it, and to go on demanding answers, Richie waits, but he doesn't, his expression just growing more unreadable.

"Okay then," Eddie finally says. "I guess it's been good to catch up. Thanks for bringing my stuff, but if you're going, you should probably go."

"I mean – I can come back. When it's done. If you want." The familiar feeling of having fucked things up washes over him, but this time, it isn't even something he's done deliberately.

"I can't stop you. Tell Stan I said hi, or whatever." Eddie waves his fingers on his immobilized arm again, slumping even further into the bed. Standing up, Richie watches him struggle to push himself back up for a moment, struggling with a few impulses himself. When one of them wins out, he reaches down, sliding an arm under Eddie's good shoulder, whispering "Here, if you won't let me help you, at least let me – " over his protests, gently tugging him back upright. Richie doesn't let go right away, and he can't pretend it's anything more than a hug anymore. At first, Eddie relaxes into it, letting him. Even though a moment later, he tenses, and Richie lets go, he doesn't entirely regret it.

Hand on the door to leave, Richie turns back. "I'll come back. I've got to see how your chainsaw arm works."

"Sure." Eddie says coldly, but the corner of his mouth twitches in something that's almost a smile.

* * *

Richie jerks awake when the wheels touch down at Hartsfield-Jackson, wrenching a muscle in his neck. The pain is at least enough to dilute out the nightmare he'd been having, reducing it down to strobing lights, the smell of blood, and a tightness in his chest. As they taxi to the gate, he toys with his glasses, checking to see if the crack in the lens has gotten any worse, and tries to smooth out the indentations from the frame in his skin.

"Everything okay?" The man in the seat next to him asks.

"Yeah, fine." Richie pastes on a smile, trying to understand why he's initiating this interaction when they're so close to being freed.

“You looked like you could use the sleep,” the man continues, sympathetically. He's long legged and high cheekboned, and Richie can't imagine his concern is anything more than perfunctory.

He gets his glasses back on his face and immediately notices the slightly damp patch on the man's shoulder. It's a nice shirt, too. "Fuck, was that me? I can pay you for dry cleaning."

"No, don't worry, it's okay." His smile is kind, and makes Richie fumble with his seat belt buckle a few times before he can get it unclasped.

Standing in the aisle, Richie tells the overhead compartment "Thanks, I'll owe you one," before grabbing his duffel and making a quick path down the jet bridge.

Mike texts him, saying he might as well be parked on I-75, so instead of heading down through security, Richie grabs a seat at one of the overpriced terminal bars, facing the large window, and orders a Maker’s on the rocks. The sky feels closer here, clouds hanging low and moving too quickly. It feels claustrophobic, despite the careful minimalist design of the bar. He drains his drink too quickly, clacking the ice against his teeth, and the burn rises from his stomach through his throat, flaring through his sinuses. He's about to leave, aiming for the shops and some obnoxious Atlanta souvenir, when the overhead PA crackles on.

_Final boarding call for Delta flight 352 with nonstop service to Los Angeles, gate A6._

Richie grabs the strap of his duffel, scanning the numbers of the gates around the bar. He could make it, if he moved quickly. It might take some effort to charm the gate agent, but throwing money at a problem was usually enough to overcome what a few bad jokes couldn't. Mike might kill him, but if he didn’t turn up, Mike might not even remember why he’d been going to the airport. He imagines a month later, finding an ATL-LAX ticket stub, and only passingly thinking that he should consider cutting back a little if he’d blacked out an entire tour stop.

He’s still hesitating, irresolute, bouncing his leg on the bar stool footrest, when someone slides into the seat next to him.

“Mind if I take you up on that one you owe me?” It’s the guy from the middle seat, with the same confusingly earnest smile. Richie drops the duffel strap, and makes a gesture that's interpretable as permission. His seatmate leans over to punch in a vodka soda and another bourbon into Richie's ordering tablet. He smells like the recycled air from the plane with an undercurrent of sweat, and Richie wonders if he'll ever be able to get Eddie's hoodie clean enough to give it back to him.

"Mark, by the way." He extends his hand, and Richie takes it, his skin as cool and dry as Richie's is clammy, and he lets go quickly.

"Does that make you a shareholder in Wahlburgers?" Mark laughs in a way that Richie can tell means he doesn't get it, but it's not his finest work and he doesn't call him out on it. "And it's Rich."

"Where're you headed, Rich?" Their drinks show up, and Mark takes his first, looping the stirrer around the drink with his finger.

"Here." Mark raises his eyebrows, and Richie takes a slow sip of his bourbon, trying to avoid making the same mistake twice. "Just pregaming baggage claim." Mark laughs again, and the positive feedback is disorienting. "You?"

"Buenos Aires. It's a long layover, I just need to kill some time." He drains his glass, muscles in his throat working, though the effect is offset by the satisfied sound he makes when he finishes. "Listen, if you're going to hang around anyway, why don't you come with me to the sky club. It's a little douchey, but the drinks are better, or at least freer."

Richie checks his phone, but with no update from Mike, he agrees. He follows Mark through the terminal, still scanning the gates for LAX departures, but without much intentionality, having already found a different kind of escape.

He has an inkling where this is going, but is still a little taken aback when, in the lounge, Mark doesn't take a seat at the bar, but instead leads him back to the showers behind the bathroom. They're flatteringly lit and recently cleaned, but Richie balks a little at the setting, considering the subspecies of bacteria the airport cleaners might not have touched.

"Come on, it's fine." Mark's smile is still warm, turned hungry at the edges. The certainty in his eyes is so unfamiliar, and Richie lets it guide him into the stall, and close the door behind him. At the pressure of Mark's hand on his shoulder, Richie sinks to his knees, obligingly watching him unzip his pants and tug them down over his hips. His cock is intimidating, not that Richie has had much to compare it to, stiffening quickly under his gaze, and he fits it into his mouth before he can reconsider. It keeps filling against his tongue, and Mark makes the same satisfied sound from before. He grips the back of Richie's head, encouraging him to move, and he complies, bracing himself against his hips for balance.

It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant, both an improvement over his previous encounters on the other side of the equation and still hollowly disappointing. Richie feels too aware of his teeth to really commit, but he does manage a bit of a rhythm, and with the way Mark's hand is tugging at his hair, it can't be going too badly. He tries to concentrate on the moment – after all these years hiding from this, finally living up to the names should have meant something – but he keeps drifting back to his phone in his back pocket, trying to decide if he's felt it vibrate or not.

Mark pulls a little more forcefully at his hair in a non-verbal question, but Richie shakes his head slightly, determined to see it through, and doesn't move. With a couple of short thrusts of his hips, Mark comes, bitter in the back of his throat, and Richie pulls off, coughing.

He offers a hand to help him up, and Richie takes it, grateful against his protesting joints. "Do you want me to - "

"Nah, it's fine," Richie answers, more interested in escaping than anything else.

The look Mark gives him is a little sad – and wasn't that more familiar – but it passes quickly enough. "I'll be back at the bar, if you want."

His phone finally does vibrate then, and Mike says he'll be there in another twenty minutes. He steps out of the stall, lightheaded, and makes use of one of the disposable toothbrush kits, lingering on the foam disappearing down the drain.

* * *

Richie awkwardly shuffles into the room after Mike. The rest of them fall silent, breaking off the soft conversations they've been having, presumably trying not to wake Stan, laid out on yet another hospital bed. It's cramped with the six of them; Bill slouching in one of the chairs while Ben sits awkwardly upright in the other, giving Bev space to perch on the armrest. Mike takes up against a wall with low windows set into it, head nearly brushing against the dust-covered vertical blinds, and apologizes for their delay. Richie goes to join him, and half-nods and waves to Patty with his hands still in his pockets. She smiles at him from her place on Stan's bed, slowly running her fingers through his hair. There's more warmth in her smile than Richie deserves, given the jealousy that smolders in his chest, charring his throat.

"Richie, if you say the word Hotlanta within county lines, I will know," Stan says without opening his eyes.

"It's too late, he already asked me if this tour was crunk," Mike narcs, but Richie grins into their collective eyerolls, and it turns genuine when he catches Ben's completely blank expression. Back among the reassembled Losers, he unclenches his jaw a fraction.

"Stan the Man, haven't missed a beat!" Richie says brightly, forcing it a little. "Get it, cause - you did miss. A few." In Stan's performatively unamused stare, he finds the recognition and sense of knowing, of being seen, that he’d had from the others back in Derry, and had lost from Eddie. It's both a salve and a fresh wound at once, and trying to reconcile everything is mixing badly with the sourness in his stomach.

"I'm so glad you all could make it," Patty says quietly. "He's been telling me so much about all of you, these last few days. I can't say I understand what happened, but it can't have been easy."

"He has?" Richie asks quietly, at the same time as Bill drawls, "What part of a killer clown from outer space is confusing to you?" Stan immediately sits up and asks, "From _space_?" and then they're all talking over each other, and Richie lets it go, letting Bill dramatically re-tell how Mike drugged him, and their ayahuasca vision quest, or whatever. He hadn't been particularly interested in the why of it all when the how had felt a lot more relevant - though maybe it would've given him an idea of what to do now.

Unlike in his dreams, where Richie feels timeless and unmoored revisiting the various hellscapes It had made for them, it doesn't take them long to get through the retelling. Ben explains with pride how Bev had probably saved Eddie's life in the end, and Richie agrees enthusiastically. It's with less enthusiasm that he confirms Eddie's safe and healthy enough back In Boston, and he tonelessly recounts the details about the surgery. Patty, to her credit, is appropriately sympathetic, but her presence stops him from saying anything about what Eddie does or doesn't remember.

They drift into an awkward silence, which Ben mercifully breaks. "Listen, I'm starving, let's find out how this hospital can mangle a meat and three and get Patty to tell us the stories Stan won’t." He starts herding them out of the room, resting his hand lightly on Bev's elbow, and she leans into the touch. Bill knocks over his chair getting out of it, getting dangerously close to some of the beeping monitors, but Stan just quirks an eyebrow and watches him scramble to right it. "Careful with those long legs of yours," Richie intones. "Fuck you," Bill replies cheerily, and follows the rest of them out.

"Be right there," Richie half-heartedly calls after them, but lingers, kicking a little at the cracking linoleum instead of making any move toward the door.

Stan eyes him carefully, even if Richie can't quite meet his gaze again. "How are you, Rich?"

He slumps his shoulders, deflating. "Peachy keen, Stanley. Just peachy. How could I not be, look where we are?" Stan's smile is patient, and Richie pulls it together. "Shouldn't I be asking you?"

"I'm fine," Stan says, and unlike most of the times he’s heard that answer, Richie actually believes him. "But I need to say thank you, to thank all of you, really. For being brave when I couldn't be."

Richie waves him off. "The others, maybe, I was just there." He clenches his teeth, and forces the rest of the words out, choosing to pick open one scab instead of another. "Look, I need to tell you I'm sorry – "

"I'm Jewish, Rich, remember? We don't do confession."

"I said you were weak. And that's why you – did what you did," Richie presses on, refusing to let himself off the hook. And as it had turned out, Richie isn't entirely sure Stan hadn't had the right idea.

"You weren't wrong." Stan looks contemplative, with no trace of insult or accusation. "Patty's putting on a brave face, but it'll be a long time before she can forgive me, I think. And I can't say I blame her." 

"Still. It was just bullshit. I didn't even do anything," Richie mumbles. He’s beginning to regret starting this conversation, unprepared for how readily Stan would absolve him.

"Didn't you kill Bowers?" Stan asks, wryly.

Richie feigns offense. "What are you, a cop? That was self-defense, if anyone's asking."

"I'd hardly consider that 'nothing,' even so." Richie shrugs, but Stan continues. "You know, there are worse things than weakness."

Richie sighs, and puts his hands behind his head. "I never told you – what I saw. What It made me see," he starts, and hesitates, losing his resolve.

Stan takes pity, or something like it, on him, and pointedly asks "How's Eddie doing?"

"Eddie wasn't weak," Richie says, distractedly. He pulls out his phone to check the time, repeating the motion twice before the numbers mean anything. "He’s okay, like I was saying. I think they're fixing his shoulder now. He wouldn't let me tell the doctor to swap his arm out for a laser cannon." He shrugs again. "His loss."

It's Stan's turn to look uncertain, rubbing a little at the bandages on his forearms. "Beverly told me – "

"Yeah. I think he forgot. Everything with the clown, coming back to Derry. It's happening like last time. He'll remember some things, if I tell him, but – "

"Are you sure?" Stan looks puzzled, like he's trying to make everything add up. "The rest of us remember, don't we? And you’ve all been out of there for a few days now. I didn't even go back to Derry, but it's come back to me."

Already knowing it was true doesn’t stop the wave of anger crashing into him, drowning Richie in the sense of unfairness. "Bev should've mentioned it's not like I know how this works," he says tightly. "And maybe she's right, maybe it would be better if he can't remember any of this shit. He doesn't need the nightmares." As quickly as it had come, the feeling ebbs. Of all of them, Stan was the least responsible for the outcome.

"Would you really rather not remember?" Stan asks carefully.

"Maybe," Richie says, crossing his arms and indulging in some petulance. "I had it pretty good. I was in the middle of a tour, for fuck's sake."

"Thanks Rich, it's been great reconnecting with you too," Stan says flatly.

"Oh fuck off, you know what I mean."

Stan relents, and resumes probing. "Were you really happy before? You knew something was wrong, didn't you? Something missing?" Richie doesn't answer, and Stan sighs. The shifting light throws the lines in his face into sharper relief, a reminder he doesn't really need that Stan had been a part of this too, scarred before Mike had ever called him. "I think Patty knew, better than I did. But I know I felt it, a few late nights."

"I guess," Richie mumbles, reluctantly. It wasn't the same, but Stan couldn't know that. He'd thought he'd known perfectly well what was wrong before - _he_ was wrong, and even now, after Mike had blown open his childhood memories, the space clown was still incidental to that wrongness, had only amplified his awareness of it.

"Don't you think Eddie felt the same way?" Stan presses. "If he's forgotten again, maybe he still does? Doesn't he deserve to know he can be brave?"

"I – " Richie falters, remembering the pride in Eddie's face, before everything had fallen apart.

Stan lowers his already soft voice. "Don't you think he deserves to know someone loves him for what he can do, instead of what he can't?" 

Richie starts to ask who'd filled him in on Myra, before the implication of what he's said sinks in. He thrusts his hands as firmly in his pockets as if they'd been the posts Bill was always muttering about. It only does a little to steady him against his rapid drop in blood pressure, and nothing for the too-familiar sensation of heat behind his eyes. "You knew," he says finally, voice only slightly cracking.

Stan stares at him like he's the dumbest person he's ever met, and he might be. Accountants probably had smart friends.

"Do the others – "

"Stop deflecting, you can ask them later." Even through his blurring vision, Stan looks serious, and Richie tries to corral his rising panic. "Just think about it, Richie. Even if he doesn't remember, it doesn't mean he doesn't want to." Under Stan's scrutiny, Richie scrubs at his eyes, and nods. Satisfied, Stan directs, "Go on, catch up with everyone. Bring me back some ambrosia salad, would you?"

Richie blinks back a few remaining tears, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Are you _sure_ you didn't come back wrong?"

"Let Patty worry about that," Stan answers, and shoos him out of the room.

* * *

It's a long walk from MGH to the new facility in Navy Yard, where Eddie's been transferred for post-op recovery, the bus directions his phone is giving him too convoluted at this point in the day.

The humidity's followed Richie back from Atlanta, and Eddie's hoodie sticks to him uncomfortably in the airless afternoon. He should probably try buying a new jacket before he leaves town, and maybe replacing the hoodie, but there aren't any shops in this part of the city, and the idea passes as quickly as it comes. As he walks over the main pedestrian bridge, he tries instead to appreciate the feeling of the city, still almost entirely new to him after the past few days. So resolved, he hardly sees the buildings around him, only feeling the vibrations of the bridge under his feet as the cars pass. He's circumspectly avoided New England on his tours before, much to his manager's chagrin, though now that decision feels like a perfectly rational one.

He makes a turn off the main throughway too early and has to check the map on his phone to reorient. He could've used Eddie's sense of direction but after another half hour of searching through the different buildings he finds himself in front of the right building, rising new and imposing into the sky against the industrial port.

He hesitates in front of the entrance, earning a few curious looks from employees and other patients as they pass through into the building. He turns back, walking through the nearby park, and sits on a concrete outcropping next to the water.

Stan might've been right, but that didn't make going through with this any easier. Richie still can't understand why Eddie, who had retained more than most of them, had been affected first by the Derry-centric mindfuck. He scans through his own memories, searching again for any gaps, but can't find more than the usual.

The wooden docks stretching out into the water bob up and down with the current. He watches a seagull try to land on one of the posts, but it has to circle and reattempt its landing a few times before it catches it on the upswing. He hears someone coming up behind him, and turns to look. Ben strides toward him, carrying two cups of coffee, and hands one to Richie before sitting down to his side. It's Dunkin again, but Richie takes it, and drinks it without checking it. It's black and palatable this time, and the heat of it is unexpectedly cooling in the too-close air.

"How'd you know I was here?"

Ben waves his phone at him, which feels dangerous this close to the water. "You texted us, remember?"

"Oh. Right." He had dutifully updated them when the receptionist had explained the relocation, and promptly forgotten in his own preoccupation.

"Bev's off re-parking, but she'll be here in a few minutes, if you want to go in."

Richie nods. "Okay."

They sit in silence, watching the boats ferry in and out of the harbor in the distance. Richie kicks his feet against the wall of the outcropping, less comfortable with waiting than Ben.

"You know we all love you," Ben says, slinging an arm around his shoulders. "Eddie too, even if he doesn't remember it now."

"I need to tell him," Richie says, leaving it open-ended, but he has a sense Ben might have been at least as perceptive as Stan. He hears more footsteps, and sees Bev approaching them from the other direction. Ben turns to wave, smiling broadly. It probably wasn't so foreign to him, after all.

"Is it okay if I go in alone? At first?" Richie asks.

Ben lifts his arm, patting him on the back a few times before letting go. "Of course. Whatever you need, Richie."

Richie scrambles up the concrete and back onto the walkway, heading back toward the building.

* * *

"What, can Make-A-Wish for adults only get D-list comedians?" Eddie looks pleased with himself, the expression more familiar on his face than anything from the last week.

Richie freezes in the doorway, opening monologue dying on his tongue. "Do you know who I am?"

"The queen of England." 

Despite himself, Richie feels the back of his neck warm at his choice of insult. "No, really – "

"Do you think I have brain damage?" Eddie narrows his eyes, but Richie must look serious enough, because he plays along. "Richard Tozier, professional fuckface? Jesus, what are you on about?"

Moving out of the doorway at last, Richie collapses into the latest bedside chair, lost and suddenly exhausted with this routine. “Nothing, never mind.” He massages his temples, and it only makes his fingers damp with sweat. “You doing okay?” 

Eddie winces, but shows off his right arm, now with only a few bandages barely visible under the hem of his hospital gown. "Fine. Stings like a motherfucker, but they said everything went smoothly." He resettles his arm on the blankets, and shoots him a sidelong glance. "Took you long enough."

Richie frowns. "I told you – "

"You told me? I haven't seen you since I passed out in the sewer."

"At the other building? A few days ago?" Richie suggests.

Eddie considers this. "They just gave me this," he says, pointing lower on his arm, where Richie can now see has a clunky patch adhered to the skin, in addition to the bandages. "I guess they must've started me on something stronger before the surgery."

"And you would know," Richie says without thinking, sitting back and already spiraling off in a different direction. It's not what Eddie's talking about, but abruptly, he remembers a dozen videos he's seen of children coming home from the dentist, unfocused and amnesiac from the anesthesia. Stan might’ve underestimated how stupid he is.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Eddie asks sharply. Unintentionally, Richie searches for and finds the toiletry bag in the corner of the room, which Myra must have brought over the other hospital. Eddie tracks his gaze and spots it at nearly the same time. "Did you go through my shit?" Eddie's eyes widen, actually seeing what Richie’s wearing. "Is that my jacket you’re sweating through?"

"Mine was a little too covered in your blood for the public," Richie sidesteps, even as he toys with the cuff, tugging on a thread starting to work its way out of its seam. "Myra said she didn’t want the rest of your things yet, so they're just sitting at the hotel."

"You talked to Myra?" Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose, and frowns, looking like he doesn't really want to hear the answer.

"Just a little, don’t worry. She didn’t tell me about any of your gross couple rituals or nicknames or secrets." Eddie's frown deepens, and Richie regrets saying it enough for both of them.

Eddie looks back at the bag in the corner. "After this, you probably know more of them than her anyway."

Richie tries not to feel too pleased, when Eddie is still so visibly uncomfortable. "Hey, it's really no - "

Eddie looks back at him, discomfort hardening into something defensive, and Richie forces himself not to look away. "Why'd you come back?"

Richie wrestles with himself and decides on something close to what he'd intended. "When we talked before, I think you couldn't remember what happened, with the clown and all. And I thought I should tell you."

"Why? Did you want to rub it in that I got stabbed while I was gloating? Or remind me that no matter how many times you said you were going to fuck my mom, I'm the one who did it?"

"No, what the fuck?" Richie asks, recoiling. Eddie sounds more embarrassed than truly angry, but the accusation still stings.

Eddie sits back, looking away. “Sorry. She’s leaving me. Myra. I guess it’s less of a surprise, if I was awake before, we must've talked. I wish I knew what I’d said, but it's not your fault." Richie hesitates on the edge of telling him what he does know, but Eddie goes on, saving him from making it worse. "So you came? Earlier?"

"Yeah." Richie searches for an adequately distracting topic. "You might want to check your phone, you looked like you were trying to schedule a meeting or something."

Startled, Eddie pulls his phone off the bedside table, and peruses it. With a moment to think, Richie founders on the rocks of his own expectations. He had so carefully steeled himself to face Eddie's lack of recognition and uncertainty, bemoaning the injustice, that the sudden reversal and return to the full force of his attention is as terrifying as it is a relief.

He tosses the phone back onto the bed, and Richie jumps. "They can manage, I'm in the fucking hospital." He watches him for a moment, and Richie can’t think of a way to explain his relief without sounding too creepy about it. "If you've been down here, did you leave again?" Eddie asks at last.

"I went down to see Stan," Richie says, feeling guilty all over again, with even less reason.

"Stan?" Eddie's face falls. "For the funeral?"

Relieved to have the opportunity to share something good for a change, Richie reaches out, stopping short of Eddie's shoulder and gripping the bed frame instead. "No, Eds, Stan's alive. He and Patty send their best, and you have a standing invitation to cross the Mason-Dixon and visit yourself."

Eddie isn't really listening, so Richie shuts up. "He's alive? So we all - we're all okay?" His eyes start to well, and Richie has to look away to avoid setting himself off. Eddie collects himself much more quickly than Richie usually manages, looking up at the ceiling and blinking fast. "I can’t believe it."

Richie can't either, still reeling from his own stupidity, and doesn't trust himself to say anything else.

After an unusually quiet pause, Eddie says pensively, "You got off easy with all this, you know."

"Easy?” Richie he swallows the rest of his incredulous rebuttal, curious where Eddie is headed.

Eddie nods. “Your life, your career, you can just go back, can’t you? What did the clown even have on you? Did It even show you anything, when we split up?”

"What, trying to kill me wasn’t enough?" Richie asks, weakly. Eddie raises his eyebrows, pulling at the stitches in his cheek, and Richie finally makes a decision. He could just go back, it was true, he'd been on the edge of doing it since he left Derry, but Eddie is finally giving him an opening. It isn't the one he'd planned for, but he can go without a script, even if he's a little rusty. "There was definitely something. Are you sure you want to know? No takebacks."

Eddie nods, equal parts wary and curious. Richie rests his hand on his cheek, letting himself skim his fingers over the bandage. Eddie twitches a little in surprise, but doesn't look away. Before his sense of self-preservation catches up, Richie leans forward and kisses him. The moment, imagined more times than he'd be willing to admit, even to himself, is over in a heartbeat, the momentum already carrying him back into his chair.

"Actually, it was the Paul Bunyan statue, and a twenty-foot axe, do you even remember when they put that thing up, it was scary enough when it wasn't alive – " Richie rambles, too busy rationalizing to stop talking. It was fine, nothing bad had happened, and if nothing else happened that was fine too, this was all the closure he needed, and he could finally get back to LA and start over.

"Shut up, Richie," Eddie says, and Richie starts to pull his hand back, but Eddie grabs his wrist, pulling him forward again. He returns the kiss, with more enthusiasm than Richie had ever dared to hope for, and he yields to it. His lips are chapped, he tastes oddly metallic, and Richie is absolutely going to fall out of the chair if they continue for much longer. It still might be the best thing that's ever happened to him, the last few days falling away like a bad dream to join the rest.

Eddie starts to reposition them, but doing so must do something to his shoulder, and he pulls away, hissing in pain. Richie tries reaching out to the back of his neck, but Eddie twists away further, out of reach. He looks back at Richie, suddenly calculating, breathing fast. "This isn't pity, is it?"

Richie sighs, sliding the chair back from the bed. "What?"

"Or because of what I did in the sewer?"

"The sewer?" Richie echoes, pointlessly. "I already said - "

Eddie shakes his head, but he softens a little. "Not that, dipshit. I thought I was the one forgetting - remember getting out of the Deadlights?"

In a flash of memory, he's back on the ground in the cave, Eddie leaning over him and shouting something. The headache comes back with it, but so does something he had forgotten, overwritten entirely by adrenaline and panic. He touches his mouth, considering. "You - like Ben? With Bev?"

Eddie rolls his eyes but nods.

"I didn’t - no." He reaches back out, running his fingers through Eddie's hair, and this time, he lets him, letting his eyes drift closed for a moment. "It’s all just me - I’ve always been - "

"Blind?" Eddie suggests, and gently takes his glasses off his face. He turns them over a few times in his hands. "You should really get these fixed, this is terrible for your eyes."

Footfalls approach from behind Richie, and a male voice starts speaking. "Mr. Kaspbrak, my name is Doctor Lothrop. I’m here to start your physical therapy, is this a good time?” Richie jerks his hand back from Eddie, turning to see a white coat-shaped blur.

"Now’s fine," Eddie says, and Richie can see him nodding in his periphery. 

"I should probably – " Richie mumbles.

"Stay," Eddie finishes decisively. Richie myopically gets up to trade places with the doctor, standing on the side of the room where he’s the least likely to knock anything over.

The doctor walks Eddie through a few exercises for his shoulder, and Richie tries not to watch too overtly, not that he can really make out what’s going on. Intermittently, he can hear the frame of his glasses creak in Eddie’s hand, but Eddie never has to take a break for his inhaler. 

When they finish, the doctor hands Richie a printout with the same information, and some general postoperative details. Up close, Richie can see him looking him over dubiously, but he tells Richie to make sure Eddie followed the instructions with the usual type of spiel before leaving.

Richie scans over the packet incredulously, but feeling Eddie watching him, he walks back over to the bed. "Move over." He doesn't wait for Eddie to answer before climbing in next to him, taking his glasses back, but he's careful to keep a blanket barrier between Eddie and his shoes, and the clothes he's been wearing for too long.

Eddie shoves at him, but there's no force in it, and after a moment, he leans in to Richie's side, resting his head on his shoulder. 'You don't have to stay, you know," he says, and Richie can feel the bones in his jaw moving as he talks. "Do you know what you're signing up for?"

Richie shifts, moving Eddie enough so he can meet his eyes. "Eds. Do _you_?"

Eddie smiles, and settles back against him. Richie picks up his hand, quietly marveling at having permission from Eddie and himself, and starts reading the contents of the printout in the worst Masshole accent he can manage.


End file.
